Forbidden City to reveal more royal palace treasures

Royal treat: the Forbidden City is opening more of its doors to the publicCredit:
Getty

21 March 2017 • 8:45am

Wang Kaihao

China's Forbidden City is to put more of its ancient treasures on show, including a gallery of furniture used by Chinese royal families.

As the Forbidden City opens more of the world-renowned former royal palace to the public, additional treasures will go on display, said Shan Jixiang, the museum’s director.

Any part of the premises “deemed suitable for opening will no longer be forbidden” to the public, Shan said during a lecture last month.

The plans include opening a new gallery this year to display furniture used by royal families that lived in the palace, he said. Most such items have not been publicly shown since 1949.

About 85 per cent of the area in the museum, formally known as the Palace Museum, will be made accessible to the public by 2025, according to a museum blueprint approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage last year. By the end of last year about 76 per cent of the space was available. Shan said the remaining areas will require complex restoration work and so will need more time to be completed.

About 85 per cent of the area in the museum, formally known as the Palace Museum, will be made accessible to the public by 2025

The new gallery will showcase 2,400 sets of furniture made mostly of red sandalwood and rosewood from the museum’s collection of 6,000 sets from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. The gallery used to be an old warehouse for construction materials.

“Such areas need to be unlocked as exhibition space,” Shan said, adding that about 51,000 square metres (61,000 sq yd) of space now awaiting renovation will be open to tourists. Another exhibition area, due to open by the end of the year, will give the world a chance to view foundations of early Ming buildings, based on archaeological discoveries in recent years.

The site dates to the earliest days of the Forbidden City, Shan said. The former royal complex, covering 720,000 square metres (861,100 sq yd), functioned as the seat of power in imperial China from 1420 until the end of the monarchy in 1911.

To allow visitors more viewing space, Shan said, only relics restorers and security guards will continue to work within the complex’s red walls. About 750 employees, including him, representing roughly half the staff, will move their offices out of the walled areas.

The Forbidden City’s image as a museum has grown since new measures were initiated in 2012. Before that, it was seen as a high-brow academic institution detached from people’s daily lives, and a tourist destination where visitors marvelled at the architectural grandeur but knew little about the 1.8 million sets of cultural relics housed there. Most of the doors were shut, too.

More recently, the museum has caught the fancy of China’s growing online community with its souvenirs and interactive phone apps. In 2015, people queued overnight to watch shows of ancient calligraphy and painting in the museum’s history.

This article was originally produced and published by China Daily. View the original article atchinadaily.com